In this episode of Dark Souls II Dissected, we’re doing a deep dive into the multiplayer timer system. Unlike other Souls games, you only have a limited amount of time when you’re a guest in a host’s world, but the exact numbers involved have never been closely examined before.
The shorter duration of time allowed by the Small White Sign Soapstone is explored and considered as a feature that would’ve been nice to have in Elden Ring as well.
https://patreon.com/illusorywall
0:00 Introduction
0:46 Co-op Time Limits & Overview
4:28 Co-op Time Modifiers
7:07 Review of Enemy Values
14:20 Area Modifiers & Map Speculation
17:59 Boss Fights
19:02 PvP Time Limits
24:52 Inconsistent Timer Rate?
26:00 Closing Words
In the video I forgot to credit Meowmaritus for creating the area list seen in the video:
https://gist.github.com/Meowmaritus/8b921e13506a4eff387cfc66b86cd1b3
Doc with all enemy co-op timer subtraction values:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ufDr_7FhEOV_ckFDBBM1D8BqZtMZxl42EVybIQpv860/copy
Dark Souls 2 Design Works interview translated by Peter Barnard:
https://www.barnardtranslations.com/post/dark-souls-ii-design-works
OnlyAfro – Silver Knight Shenanigans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywyll7GUG5Q
In addition to participating in a bunch of multiplayer for this video, FenoTheFox also provided some footage from his perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/FenoTheFox
source
Something you might find quite interesting is that, for mirror knight summons. When you place a red sign in and around that boss room it doesn't actually place a red sign immediately. It has a 50% chance to place a Mirror Knight sign for 30 seconds, and then it returns to a true red summon sign. It might explain why some people have had so much difficulty getting summoned as a Mirror Knight squire, since there's no way of the player actually knowing whether they placed a Mirror Knight sign or not, and if they did at what point it reverted back to a normal red sign.
Also in terms of the arena timer, there is a host countdown as well which can expire but it's just in a different memory address to the phantom timer.
Would you consider doing a video on the map layout for Dark Souls 2 and possibly including information on what we know the original plan for Dark Souls 2 map layout was. 'How The Gutter Got Gutted' is one of my favourite videos and I'd love to know more about the original intent for this game. I understand this may be a hard video to make, but thank you anyway for making this kind of content!
It's a shame a lot of DS2's really interesting mechanics were never touched on again. They were really going somewhere with the bonfire ascetics and NG+ changes, and even if it sort of boiled down to extra enemies, I would've loved to see it expanded on in Elden Ring.
21:10 Dragon eye lets you use estus flasks so fights can last longer.
That my guess.
Frankly, the information base about pretty much every DS game is pretty sad. 80% of the time, you've got people confirming assumptions that aren't even true; 15% of the time you've got elitists who don't like to share information because they believe that their journey to having all the information is some sort of accomplishment; the other 5% you actually have some real conversation.
oh yes, best souls 2, where a feature spawns every now and then
Gteat informative video as always! I am just left wandering, is there a time subrtaction for normal ghosts when killing an invasion? is it dependant on soul memory? or have i just missed it in the video?
Great video as always! Do you know why the gargoyle outside of Bestial Sanctum (in Elden Ring) isn't aggressive when you warp there early game? And what triggers him to be aggressive later on? To be clear, I'm NOT talking about Gurranq. It's the Grargoyle right outside.
My hunch is that there's timers/kill time reduction to incentivize the host actually playing the game, seeing as how it's pretty common for people to just summon and have a friend clear the area, basically forcing the host to at the very least participate
Awesome! Dark Souls 2 sucks shows with numbers
It was a good mechanic because the casul hosts couldnt rely only on summons
DS2 is truly the best Souls game!
Perhaps one of the reasons shrine of amana keeps the lowered time reduction despite it being late game was to allow co op to last longer into such an enemy dense area
this would be a mess in elden ring since its so damn huge.. thats my opinion anyway
22:20 about the blue covenant, I'm not sure if it works the same way for ds2, but in ds3, a blue is seemingly tied to a specific invader. There can be a full house of invaders and then if the blue kills the right one they go home instantly. I think it finds the invader from the moment the pvp session info gets loaded which is around the time the invasion message pops up before you actually go into the loading screen to go into their world. It might pick an invader at random
Lol imagine summoning someone in Drangleic Castle only for them to get booted after they kill 2 of the 5 swarming gargoyles.
Unless there’s a feature that prevents phantoms from being sent home mid-combat, this all seems like a huge annoyance.
Thats why people used to dupe tokens of spite so they could reset these timers and thus get more pvp. I know delicate ring is a thing but considered how far it is in the game, its price and it limits your ring slot, many people rather used the dupe glitch. Still it was neat idea as you could not be invided back to back like in DS3 (pontiff bonfire for instance) and could actually have time to relax.
i wonder if some of the higher valued enemies were placed to limit how far you could take NPC summons. I remember DS2 having a lot more npc summons than the other games and the point system might have been there to controll that they dont stay too long. The horse boss in drangleic castle comes to mind for this
you mentioned the name engraved ring expanding soul memory range, does anyone know specifically how much it is expanded by? i recently gifted a friend dark souls 2 and we've been trying to play together, both very very new and he doesnt have the ring yet
Something something DS2 bad something something.
Great video! On the topic of Mirror Knight Squires, one thing I’ve always been curious of you might be able to find out: does a buff spell like Scared Vow affect the Looking Glass Knight at all?
I never knew about the time limit probably cuz I alway summoned or been summoned right before fog gates
So you are for timed coop? Here is a thing, if I want to play with friends, than no thanks for this kind of feature, as to just do it like this with randoms I don't mind it.
Soul Memory is the worst multiplayer idea of the serie
wtf. I've played this game the most yet I did not know there was such a tree.
Calling Fextralife a wiki is a stretch lmao
They didn't add it because Dark Souls 2 is hot dogshit…you think they want to make their good game more like a hot dogshit game…?
BAD
One time i got to appreciate the infinite timer on blues, i was a host at earthern peak, i was invaded and had a blue come and help me. I killed the first invader and a second one showed up, the blue stayed with me until that second one was killed. It probably has something to do with my horrible pc specs and low fps on multiplayer. So yeah, i don't think it's supposed to occur normally. I had 540k soul memory and was using the engraved ring, because i was cooping with a friend earlier, this was right after the covetous demon bossfight, and i was on sotfs version, latest patch (I tried to include as many details as possible to see if Something helps)
Elden Ring should tune coop somehow. I helped someone through the entire sewer level for half an hour on one set of flasks only to die at the boss and get nothing. At minimum, it would be nice if you could get some flask charges back at the grace (which you, a summon, can’t rest at) or stakes of Marika (which should recharge flasks for solo hosts too). But I also like the idea of allowing summons to fulfill their duty without beating the boss. The only change I would make is allow the host to decide. So there would be a second item like the finger severer that is grayed out until enough time runs out or enemies are defeated. Then the host can say thank you and send you home with a rune arc and you don’t just abandon them half way through a tough fight.